The Betrayal of the Body / Love and Orgasm
By Alexander Lowen, M.D.
“Lowen makes the best attempt I have seen to derive male and female psychological differences from physical ones, and Love and Orgasm is worth reading for this discussion alone.”
In an age in which both man and society are increasingly fragmented it is heartening to find a psychologist who affirms the fundamental psychological unity of the individual. Dr. Alexander Lowen is an apostle of the integrated personality and an enemy of the mind/body dicotomy. His fundamental truths are that the needs of the body are basically good and proper; that their denial or repression results in psychological, physical and emotional illness; and that in fact mind and body are one—their (partial) disassociation or opposition are the consequences of neurosis.
Betrayal Of The Body is an exploration of the psychology of schizophrenia; a split in the mind/body unity of the individual. Dr. Lowen explains that in the normal individual mind and body are complementary: the body generates impulses; the mind interprets and adapts them to reality. In the schizoid individual, however, bodily impulses are rigidly controlled and logical thought is substituted for feeling as the motivation for action.
Dr. Lowen traces the roots of schizophrenia to parental ignorance or condemnation of childhood needs. The result is a conflict between the innate needs of the body and the pain of being continually frustrated or punished when they are expressed. The result of the conflict is a repression of bodily feeling and personalities divided against themselves in which feelings become antagonistic to psychic “values,” sensuality is manifested without satisfaction, rigid bodies camouflage meek egos, and a host of other psycho-physiological conflicts appear.
Dr. Lowen shows how such neuroses can be overcome through a combination of psychological insight and physical reawakening. The Betrayal Of The Body is a manifesto for reclaiming the whole self.
Love and Orgasm focuses upon a particular aspect of the self: the relationship between sexuality and personality. Written from a Freudian and Reichian base, it is a combination of poetic insight, perverse Freudianism, profound discussion and sophisticated rationalization. In brief, it is a mixed bag of virtues and faults, well worth reading, but only with care.
Two key distinctions made by Dr. Lowen are between sexual maturity and sophistication and between sensuality and sexuality. He explains that to the “sophisticate” sex is distorted to an instrument of power and egotism, while to the mature person sex is effectively an expression of feeling toward one’s partner and motivationally an end in itself. Inherently the “sophisticate” is afraid of letting go, frustrating full sexual satisfaction. Similarly the sensualist seeks perpetual sexual excitement, rather than drive fulfillment, impoverishing his innate sexuality.
Following Wilhelm Reich, Dr. Lowen describes the sexually healthy person as the orgasmically potent individual, capable of total discharge of bodily energy in sex. This is only possible, Dr. Lowen maintains, to the person who has fully accepted his body and his sexual nature.
That sexual nature is fundamentally different for man and woman, Dr. Lowen contends. Because penile-vaginal sex is impossible without the arousal of the male, woman is dependent upon man in a way that is not true of man upon woman. Consequently man is the pursuer, woman the pursued; men dominate, women are subordinate.
Clearly this is the most controversial area of Dr. Lowen’s thought, and to a great extent it affects his entire sexual theory: penile-vaginal intercourse is exalted over other forms of copulation, heterosexuality becomes a requirement for psychological health, and homosexuals and lesbians are regarded as tragic figures.
To say the least, Dr. Lowen overstates his case. Unwittingly he bases his model of good human sexuality upon the stereotypes of the aggressive male and feminine women, even though he later rejects such simplistic distinctions. Nevertheless, Dr. Lowen makes the best attempt I have seen to derive male and female psychological differences from physical ones, and Love and Orgasm is worth reading for this discussion alone.
Reviewed by Jarret B. Wollstein / Psychology / The Betrayal Of The Body [275 Pages) / Love And Orgasm (319 Pages) / BFL Price, Both Books $2.75